14 Bookkeeping Tasks A Virtual Assistant Can Do For Entrepreneurs

Remember when you started your company? Then, invoicing, receivables & payable, and bookkeeping, in general, were easy.

But now, when you think of scaling up your business, bookkeeping seems like a gigantic task. The finances that stay in the backseat during business commencement tend to go out of hand as your clientele increases.

It is a challenge for small business owners across the world. At one point, your business requires team expansion, even when you do not have the resources to do so. That's how startups initiate - some are bootstrapped, and some sail with minimal capital. We go into the details later in this blog.

Returning to bookkeeping, it was not long ago when small business founders hesitated to work with administrative assistants. But, as the business requirements and demand for administrative virtual assistants increased, entrepreneurs increasingly began working with them.

Similarly, bookkeeping is a crucial task for which entrepreneurs need help as they flourish in their business. And business owners should take the same route to avail of accounting services as they take with administrative services - hiring bookkeeping assistants. However, even Forbes suggests that "accountants do not have to be on your staff."

Now, the question is, what tasks can a virtual bookkeeper do for your business? First, let's explore the answer.

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14 Tasks To Delegate To A Bookkeeping Virtual Assistant

1. Ensuring Your Bills Are Paid On Time
   

A virtual assistant for bookkeeping can make paying bills as simple as possible. They are trained and qualified to perform all accounting operations, including bill payment and payment collection.

Vendor bills and other payables can turn into a large pile, and you must guarantee timely payment. Otherwise, late bill payments may lead to the disinterest of vendors and eventual business abandonment. A virtual assistant can set reminders and directly make the payments that do not require your intervention.

2. Preparing Balance Sheets Or P&L Accounts

Business owners know the importance of financial statements such as balance sheets, trial balances, and profit/loss statements. These are essential documents to ensure that your business runs smoothly. A virtual bookkeeper can create and archive these records for you, so they are available for examination and use.

Yearly financial statements are significant for the tax rebate, and most importantly, you can crack funding with your financial records.

3. Reconciling Bank And Credit Card Statements

Reconciling your financial records and business bank accounts is a difficult task. There is a scope for making mistakes if you do not have prior experience reconciling bank statements. However, it is necessary for proper bookkeeping. A virtual bookkeeper can assist you in avoiding errors and keeping your accounts in good standing.

Business owners must know that having well-maintained records is essential from a legal point of view too. Moreover, governments in various countries often lay out beneficial schemes for entrepreneurs with proper financial records. Even the investors show great interest in businesses with well-maintained records.

4. Preparing Invoices

Every business requires an invoice preparation service. It is legal proof that a business owner sold their products or services to a customer. However, business owners do not have the time to mention the technicalities - quantity, price, date, and other details - after a sale.

In addition, some businesses require bulk invoice preparation. However, preparing bulk invoices is out of the question for entrepreneurs, as it can usurp their entire time. An online bookkeeper can solve this problem by handling invoice preparation - bulk or regular. They use various invoice tools to make the task easy for business owners.

5. Preparing General Ledgers

Preparation of general ledgers can save you all the trouble of running through each receipt to identify and record revenue. General ledgers are also a record of your expenses - the record you may need to look at to cut down your spending. Since you have already posted every transaction in the general ledger, it saves you time, effort, and potential loss of money.

The tricky part is ledgers take time to prepare as they are detail-oriented. But on the other hand, virtual bookkeeping assistants have immense experience in doing such work, even when they have less time.

6. Mailing Important Documents And Invoices To Customers

Business owners must concentrate on providing the best services to the customers and leave the rest to virtual bookkeepers. The professionals send the invoices to customers for timely payment. Plus, virtual assistants can also keep track of any important documents you have to send to customers.

Just imagine if you have to do such clerical work, leaving complex business strategies and other business-related important work! Hence, it is best to leave these tasks to trained professionals.

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7. Mailing Payment Reminders

That seems like an unnecessary task! But many customers often forget to pay on time. If business founders start keeping a tally of who pays/does not pay them on time, the business can ruin. However, a bookkeeping assistant can do that, even multiple times if required.

8. Following Up With Customers By Phone

Many products and services require businesses to follow up with their customers. It can be a part of both pre-and post-sale. At times, there is price negotiation that happens over-call with customers.

When your clientele is smaller, you can follow up with your customers personally. However, this exercise becomes extremely hectic when the number of clients increases. A virtual assistant can ensure that your customer relationship is never tarnished due to lack of time.

9. Maintaining Financial Data In Your Chosen Software Application

You must have a yearly record of your finances, well-maintained and updated. It is essential to have it to track your company's growth at a glance.

A bookkeeper can help you maintain the financial data in the software you like. They can record it in a format easiest to understand and analyze.

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10. Entering Payables And Receivables

All of the figures involved in your business ventures can be an overwhelming challenge to keep track of. A virtual bookkeeping assistant can compute, classify, and record this data and provide it to you in an easy-to-work-with format that benefits your company and eases your mind.

Also, note that financial data entry is not an easy task. Small businesses can have copious amounts of financial information that may become time-consuming and non-manageable to record.

11. Sales Tax Reporting And Submission

Sales tax reporting is a complicated matter that requires expertise and experience. Unfortunately, many business owners do not exactly understand how to calculate taxes and are ignorant of the amount they must pay until the last minute. Hence, they consider tax calculation, report creation, and submission a nightmare.

Virtual bookkeeping assistants are trained in tax preparation and can keep you updated about the taxes to pay by organizing them quarterly or annually.

12. Helping To Interpret Financial Statements

Some business founders, mainly those who do not come from a finance background, find it difficult to interpret financial statements. Moreover, as data multiplies, it becomes even more challenging to understand.

In addition, similar to other departments, finance has its technical terms that a qualified bookkeeper can help you understand.

13. Dealing With Delinquent Or Bad Accounts

Businesses should always make some scope for some delinquency because not all clients you acquire tend to be fair. Dealing with these bad accounts may not be easy for entrepreneurs because other tasks take priority.

A virtual bookkeeping assistant can tackle these lawless accounts and inform you about the decisions that need you to interfere. It is an effective way to save time and get things done on time.

14. Ensuring Document Completion Before Year-End

Annual document completion takes a toll on entrepreneurs worldwide. It is a challenging task that may require you to run from pillar to post, even if it is for a single document.

A bookkeeping assistant can save your time by handling this responsibility and ensuring that paperwork & documentation is sorted right from the beginning. As a result, you no longer think about financial documents or any potential legal action.

So, that was the list of tasks a virtual bookkeeping assistant can handle for you. Bookkeeping is one aspect of finance. There are others and even more complicated ones. The biggest issue that entrepreneurs face is budgeting. Hiring in-house may empty your pockets, but an online bookkeeping assistant is a smart option. Still, there are questions to answer.

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Is Bookkeeping Important For Small Businesses?

As a small business owner, you may have these doubts, questioning the validity of bookkeeping services. However, the numbers may demand you to think otherwise.

Accounting Today quotes the report of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners that states organizations lose 5 percent of their revenue to fraud each year.

Many individuals are confident that fraud can never happen with their companies or accounts. But, unfortunately, that is a false thought! As industries produce more data, data breach is becoming increasingly common. Hence, there are specific measures to follow to keep your data safe. The only question is, do you have the time to follow all the actions regularly? It is where the role of a remote bookkeeper begins. Here are some aspects to know more about the role of a bookkeeping assistant.

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• A Bookkeeping Assistant Keeps Your Books Error-Free: There are bound to be minor problems with the movement of corporate finances out to vendors, bills, and payroll and into the firm as revenue from the services you provide. A responsible virtual assistant can double-check and triple-check all of your company's transactions to ensure accuracy and prevent difficulties caused by human error.
  

Double-checking the transactions reduces the risk of fraudulent transactions and any faulty cuts.

• Online Bookkeeper Can Securely Keep Data: As mentioned earlier, a bookkeeping assistant can store your financial information and data in the software of your choice, minimizing the risk of any breach.
  

Why are Virtual Accounting Services Best Solution For Entrepreneurs?

We touched upon the question earlier in the blog. However, now is the time to go into the details. The earlier quoted Forbes article suggests - If you are not ready to add the salary and benefits to your payroll, you can always outsource. When you outsource your accounting work to an on-demand professional, you pay for the expert time you need, which might just be a few hours a week.

Most small business founders use search terms like 'bookkeeping services near me when they want to hire a bookkeeper. Searching for a professional in your vicinity may be the first possible solution, but it is not ideal.

Just think about it. Do you expect more from a professional to be good at their jobs or belong to the same area as yours? The former one, without a doubt. A bookkeeper should possess excellent skills, irrespective of the location they work from.

Hence, remote bookkeeping services are a viable solution for entrepreneurs across the globe.

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Benefits Of Hiring A Bookkeeper Online From Wishup

• Cost Saver: Having an in-house bookkeeper is more expensive than having a remote bookkeeper. You can save more than half of your costs when you hire virtually. Expert virtual assistant agencies like Wishup offer virtual assistant services hourly, ensuring that you pay only for the time required.
  
• Pre-Trained Bookkeeper: Hiring a virtual bookkeeper from Wishup means working with trained professionals skilled in more than 70 tasks, ranging from calendar management to inbox management. These qualified professionals bring industry-specific experience to help clients worldwide and in different industries.
  
• Pre-Interviewed Bookkeeper: It may take you from a few days to months to hire an ideal bookkeeper for your company. Wishup considers this and tries its best to save clients' time by pre-interviewing the professionals and picking only the top 1% professionals, best at bookkeeping.
  
• Less Onboarding Time: Keeping the points above in consideration, there is no doubt that with Wishup, it would take you less time to hire a bookkeeper than traditional methods. Hiring typically means creating a job description, publishing it on multiple platforms, and waiting for a suitable candidate to arrive. Then, you can look at a portfolio of qualified candidates and pick the best one with us.
  
• Experienced Professionals: We ensure that only knowledgeable professionals, who have previously worked on various challenging projects, handle your project. You can benefit from the experiences of a bookkeeper, ensuring that your business moves in the right direction.
  
• No Employer Liabilities: Wishup provides the best online bookkeeping services at highly competitive prices. However, another significant benefit of hiring an online bookkeeper is that business owners do not have to bear any employee liabilities such as insurance costs, office setup expenses, utility charges, etc.
  

The last words for anyone who wants to hire a bookkeeper should be - to look at your finances and requirements and go for the most feasible option, i.e., online bookkeeping services. Many business founders still think that having an in house bookkeeper is better than working with a virtual bookkeeper.

However, any business minded individual would see the benefits of online bookkeeping services and agree that it is a good way to start for small businesses.

Having a professional bookkeeper who works as an in-house employee at less than half the salary is a dream for any entrepreneur. Hence, having an online bookkeeper is an excellent way to build your business and team. So, wait no more and set up a free consultation by mailing us at [email protected], telling us your requirements, & hiring a bookkeeper.